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Those of us who were hiding them never told the others, so that if one was destroyed the others would be safe. My master and I didn’t know if you would have more of my kind here.”

“Jade saw you with your master and was envious that you seemed to love one another,” I said. “I wouldn’t break a love that’s survived thousands of years. That’s got to be rare even among vampires.”

“I did not want to give up our tie, but I did not know that we would find other golden tigers in time to help you.”

“We could part you from your master,” Jean-Claude said.

“If it is your will I don’t think we can stop you.” He seemed very calm about it.

“You really did come here to sacrifice yourself for the common good, didn’t you?” I asked.

“The gold tigers have hidden for centuries. We learned from our earlier ignorance. Now there are more of us than the black or the blue clans. We want you to be Master of Tigers, Jean-Claude. We need you to be, because if we do this we break with the Darkness that made us, and if she ever gains power again she will make us long for true death long before she gives it to us.”

“Why would you risk her anger to join with us?” I asked.

“She knows now what we did.”

“That it was her own beloved Harlequin who put her into that long-ago sleep,” Jean-Claude said.

He nodded.

“So the white tiger’s myth is true,” I said.

“It is,” he said.

I raised eyebrows at that. Jade hadn’t known that. I didn’t think he read my mind, but he said, “We heard how you divided master from servant with the lion and the Master of Chicago, and the two Vegas tigers from their queen and master. We knew that there was a chance that you would divide at least one of us from our masters. It was always one of the gifts of the Mother, to break all bonds and bind only to her.”

“Jade didn’t know your whole plan,” I said.

“No, because then her master would have known, and we considered him corrupt.”

“Without Jade’s energy to raise his level, you can kill him,” I said.

“We could not trust him.”

“You hoped we’d steal Jade from him and make him weak,” I said.

“Yes,” he said.

“And you wanted her free of him so that when he dies, she doesn’t die with him,” I said.

“She has endured enough at his hands. When we realized there was another vampire who could break her free of him, we moved to make it so.”

“She thought you did not see her suffering,” Jean-Claude said.

“We saw, but we could not free her from him.”

“You waited for another vampire to be created who could free her,” I said.

“Who could free us all,” he said.

I gave him the look that deserved. “We’re good, but we aren’t the immortal Darkness.”

“You don’t have to be. You just have to be able to cut bonds between master and servant, all servants, and that you can do, you have proved that.”

“What do you want of us?” Jean-Claude asked.

“So you would spare me and my master, even feeling the power you gain from each broken bond?”

“We have enough power,” I said.

He studied us. “You have a great deal of power, but to do what we need, more would be better.”

“We’ll find more,” Micah said.

He studied us all. “You would spare me and my master, because he and I love each other. You would spare us for love,” he said.

I looked at Jean-Claude and my other men out of habit more than need. “What else is there?” I asked.

He smiled up at us. It was almost a beatific smile, his face shining with love close to adoration. I didn’t think it was from looking at us. I thought he was more thinking of his master, his love. “That is the answer we hoped for.”

“So you gambled centuries of happiness, your free will, and your very existence, on love?” I said.

He shrugged with his arms still bound behind his back, and the guards still heavy on his shoulders. “As you said, is there really anything else worth gambling everything for?”

What could I say but, “No, there isn’t.” And standing there holding everyone’s hands, feeling the hum of the energy we’d raised between us, I believed that.

48

THE HARLEQUIN’S GOLD tiger went back to his master. Jake and Jade stayed with us. Jake joined us in the gym like all the good guards. Jade joined us in the